Today I Can't Be Bothered Thinking of a Title
After the initial burst of excitement, the fans gradually came back to their senses. Surely the official account hadn't been hacked? Otherwise, why would they only have
liked one post and said nothing else? Then again, a hacked account probably wouldn't have liked something so directly connected to Shazhou Chronicles. Which meant—was the series coming back? Even if it wasn't, it at least meant that the bastard author who had run off with his sister-in-law hadn't died out there somewhere and had finally come crawling back.
As long as the person was alive, there was hope for everything.
In an instant, fans across the internet erupted in celebration. Weibo, forums, fan boards—everywhere was flooded with the news of the official Shazhou Chronicles account stirring back to life. Wave after wave of nostalgia posts surfaced, and for anyone who hadn't encountered the series before, it was genuinely hard to believe that a single animated work could wield this kind of power in the country.
The fans' excitement propelled Shazhou Chronicles straight onto the trending topics list—climbing from number forty-one to twenty-nine, then into the top ten, and finally settling at number two.
Today's number one trending topic was: Qin Zhao Pays Late-Night Visit to Tang Wanwan on Set.
Some of the newer producers in the industry—the ones who hadn't been around two years ago and didn't know what had happened—looked at the bright four-character title of Shazhou Chronicles sitting at number two and began to turn it over in their minds. If someone bought the adaptation rights and turned it into a film or a television drama, might that not be a very tidy profit?
The intellectual property market had been booming for years. Capital had already hoovered up virtually every web novel with any name recognition, and they still weren't satisfied—because the ones that actually caught fire were always so few. The hunger now was to find the formula behind those rare big hits. Shazhou Chronicles was shaping up to be exactly the kind of experiment worth trying.
Fu Zhen had no idea that a single accidental like on his phone had set the internet ablaze. He got up as usual, dressed, and headed to the construction site.
On the site, Jiang Hengzhu was already there early, as he always was. A few sparrows darted in and out of the mist overhead, chattering to each other about whatever small excitements the winter had brought them. He was wearing his sky-blue
work uniform and carrying a sack of lime, moving through the site at a pace that made him look like a wound-up machine that never tired.
Fu Zhen had no way of knowing whether Jiang Hengzhu had found the name card he'd deliberately left on the bricks at lunch the day before. And even if he had found it, that didn't mean he would actually come to him—thinking any further ahead than this was just borrowing trouble from nowhere.
Fu Zhen sniffed, pulled on his work gloves, gripped the handles of the small push-cart by the wall, and got to work. Sunlight cut through the wreathing clouds and fell upon the city. Gold spread across everything; it glittered in the dense rows of red bricks, each one catching tiny points of light.
From the street bordering the construction site came the distant sound of car horns.
The workers complained to each other as they hauled their loads—this damn weather was getting colder by the day.
Fu Zhen's injured left leg had the most sensitive barometer in the world for weather changes. Even through two layers of padded trousers, the cold still found its way through every gap, burrowing into flesh and bone, setting off wave after wave of deep, gnawing pain.
Perhaps this year he would have to stop working earlier than before.
But then he glanced up at Jiang Hengzhu, not far away, and felt a reluctance he couldn't quite suppress. Besides, his finances were genuinely tight right now—so he'd stick it out a while longer. At least get through December.
During the lunch break, Jiang Hengzhu received another phone call. He spoke with the person on the other end for a moment, then his gaze drifted, seemingly without thought, in Fu Zhen's direction. He said into the phone: 'There's one. Let me take another look.' Then he ended the call.
Custard Bun was a first-year university student, and one of the most devoted fans of Shazhou Chronicles. For the past two years, she had watched the series' heat gradually fade—the fan creators producing less and less, and the Custard Yellow ship surviving on nothing but the scraps of sugar that could be wrung out of the original source material.
But last night the official Shazhou Chronicles account had come back to life with a single like, and the series' heat was rising again. Unfortunately, fans of the Custard Yellow pairing were still a small minority—and more worryingly, the anti-ship and rival-ship crowds were visibly more active than they were.
In two days, a major cross-ship voting competition would be held on a well-known video platform. First place would receive fan content from over ten prominent creators in the Shazhou Chronicles fandom. Custard Bun knew her ship's numbers too well to dream of first place—but she refused to let them come last. She was one of the earliest Custard Yellow fans and she had taken it upon herself to prevent that humiliation. The first step toward that goal was a strong promotional illustration.
That evening, Custard Bun had been idly scrolling through Weibo looking for commission artists, sorted by most recent. She'd barely scrolled at all when she came across the account belonging to Jian Wen.
Jian Wen's profile picture was a hand-drawn cow-pattern cat. The drawing wasn't particularly refined, but there was something peculiar about it—the cat had a kind of goofy, irresistible vitality, as though it might blink at you at any moment.
Custard Bun clicked through to Jian Wen's profile.
The gallery was mostly rough sketches, but for reasons she couldn't quite explain, Custard Bun felt immediately that this person was exactly right for Shazhou Chronicles fan art. Maybe she was projecting—but in one hand-drawn sketch she thought she could vaguely make out the face of her favourite character, Zhu Naiyou. Her brain misfired completely, and she commissioned an illustration from this Jian Wen, who had posted nothing but a handful of rough pencil sketches as examples of their work.
When her fellow ship fans heard she'd hired some obscure unknown to draw the most important promotional image of the competition, they all decided she'd lost her mind. If you were going to commission someone, why not commission someone good? An unknown's work had no reach and no guaranteed quality. Had Custard Bun gone mad? Or had she gone broke? Who commissions a full colour illustration from a no-name account for a hundred and fifty yuan?
Friend after friend video-called her to check in, and every single one opened with: 'Blink twice if you're being held hostage.'
Custard Bun had already been having second thoughts after paying the deposit. Now, with her friends piling on, her confidence in this Jian Wen had hit rock bottom.
She'd commissioned illustrations before. A hundred and fifty yuan for a simple character illustration had disappointed her. And now she'd paid the same for a two-character colour illustration of her OTP. Had someone put a curse on her last night?
The more she thought about it, the more she felt this had been a mistake. From eight in the morning she had been sending Fu Zhen private messages on Weibo—straight through until five in the afternoon—and this Jian Wen had been completely silent the entire time. Custard Bun's nerves were shot. She told her group chat friends about it; they couldn't locate Jian Wen either, and could only console her that it was only a hundred and fifty yuan, and she should consider it a lesson learned.
Privately, her friends all agreed: Custard Bun had been an absolute fool. Who commissions from a brand-new account with no membership, no verified history, no examples? That's not a gamble, that's throwing money into the sea.
Custard Bun wasn't short on money—which made it all the more baffling. How had she let her brain switch off so completely? A hundred and fifty yuan for a three-nothing unknown. Did she enjoy being robbed?
Under the sustained assault of her friends' opinions, Custard Bun achieved a thorough reckoning with her error and solemnly vowed never to commission anyone on impulse again. She immediately contacted another artist in the fandom—a well-known one this time—and commissioned a full-colour illustration for twelve hundred yuan, to be delivered within three days.
That evening, Fu Zhen came home to the rental flat, ate a small bowl of plain noodles, and then got straight to work. He went to the video platform specifically to watch Custard Yellow compilation videos—and he had to admit that whoever was cutting these fan edits was operating at a level that left him genuinely speechless.
After two videos, Fu Zhen had almost talked himself into believing that Zhu Naiyou and Huang Lie had actually had something going on in the original. Fortunately, he caught himself.
Once he'd found his inspiration, he started drawing. From five in the afternoon until nine at night—four straight hours. Two years ago, he could have finished a polished character illustration in that time. Now he had only completed a rough sketch.
Fu Zhen opened Weibo to show the sketch to Custard Bun and see if there was anything to adjust. His elderly phone lagged again. He thought for a moment he'd logged into the wrong account. Once the screen finally recovered, Fu Zhen found his inbox flagged with over twenty new private messages, half of them from Custard Bun. The most recent had come in at six o'clock.
[Artist, when do you think the illustration will be done?]
Fu Zhen looked at the rough sketch he'd just finished. Colouring was likely to take more time than it used to. He made a rough calculation and replied.
[Within five days, probably.]
Five days for a colour illustration was not slow by most artists' standards. But perhaps because of the comparison with the other artist who was delivering in three, Custard Bun's confidence in Jian Wen had lost yet another star.
She thought about it. The twelve-hundred-yuan illustration was definitely going to be the promotional image—this Jian Wen's would just be personal fan content for herself. So she restated her requirements.
[Artist, the more explicit the better!!]
Fu Zhen genuinely wondered what was going on inside the heads of young people these days. But the client was always right. He looked at his completed sketch. He'd already noticed the day before that she wanted something with more heat to it—adjusting this sketch shouldn't be too difficult. If all else failed, he could just remove all the clothes entirely.
[The rough sketch is done. Take a look and let me know if anything needs changing.]
He sent the image to Custard Bun.
Custard Bun, who seemed to be online at all hours of the day and night, was suddenly silent. Fu Zhen felt a flutter of unease—had there been so many things to revise that the client didn't even know where to begin?
With no reply from Custard Bun, Fu Zhen had nothing to go on. He sat there holding his phone, waiting. About five minutes later, Custard Bun replied.
[!!!] [!!!!!!]
[!!!!!!!!!]